A lot of reports have been done on the reactors cooling pipes were damaged from the quake, remeber when they hooked up the new cooling systwn to the plants and they did not get water to the reactors, leaks everywhere. Tried to say they hooked it up wrong, but it was never able to use exsiting pipeings !
Independent: The explosive truth behind Fukushima’s meltdown — New …
new evidence suggests its reactors were doomed to fail … to piping and at least one of the reactors, occurred before the tsunami hit. … The suspicion that the earthquake caused severe damage to the reactors is …http://enenews.com/telegraph-explosive-truth-behind-fukushimas-meltdown-new-evidence-suggests-reactors-doomed-fail/comme…

Hi from Kalifornia. Find your comments really interesting & have learned a lot. Just wanted to tell you when I got up this morning PST 6AM I checked enenews & newsblogged & the first thing I saw was an article about how TEPCO had reached cold shutdown in reactor 1. How come no one is talking about this?
I’ve read comments that say Russia is more dependable than U.S. news So why the silence on this subject? Just asking….

Not to step on any toes here but Tepco says the reactor has been cooled to 100C which is what they have been calling cold shutdown all along. There is reason not to trust them but maybe it has actually happened. Maybe not. Why isn’t it the same as the cracks with radioactive steam escaping story that was posted this week.What makes that true or not.? As far as I can tell no one knows yet for SURE where the fuel is, is it in containment or underground.? Where does it say that is known for sure? I have just heard theories.

The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.

Nuclear fuel in three reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has possibly melted through pressure vessels and accumulated at the bottom of outer containment vessels, according to a government report obtained Tuesday

The China Syndrome — The worst case scenario — where nuclear fuel penetrates the earth and pollutes the groundwater is happening at Fukushima.

TEPCO has acknowledged they just ‘discovered’ over 6,400 spent fuel rods in a basement beneath Fukushima which is shared by all reactors at the plant. TEPCO has confirmed a groundwater leak in the basement.

The reason I mistrust the TEPCO temp reading indicating the corium is under 100 degrees is because I understand the temp gauge to be in the containment building, but not the corium. I don’t read any reports of TEPCO workers swimming down to the basement with a thermometer to measure the current heat in the corium….

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/08/21/54958207.html
“The first power-generating unit of the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan has been cooled down to 100 degrees Celsius as required for the so-called cold shutdown.
“Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), which operates Fukushima, says temperature is still high at two other damaged reactors.
“Earlier experts said that they might fail to complete all repairs at Fukushima by next January due to a too great number of technical faults at the scene of the nuclear disaster.”

I don’t know how they can measure the pressure of a broken reactor. Also there should be a margin below 100 degrees Celsius. Who is going to go to check out the measurements on Reactor #1?

“In a nuclear reactor, shutdown refers to the state of the reactor when it is subcritical by at least a margin defined in the reactor’s technical specifications. Further requirements for being shut down may include having the reactor control key be secured and having no fuel movements or control systems maintenance in progress….
“A reactor is in cold shutdown when, in addition, its coolant system is at atmospheric pressure and at a temperature below 200 degrees Fahrenheit (approx. 95 degrees Celsius).[1] This temperature is low enough that the water cooling the fuel in a light water reactor does not boil even when the reactor coolant system is de-pressurized.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_%28nuclear_reactor%29

Best case scenario – TPTB feel a genuine sense of compassion and concern for our welfare and don’t want us to over react. This hypothesis depends on TPTB either actually believing that ‘the events’ pose no serious threat, or that the threat is so terrible that knowing about it wouldn’t help, and would impact negatively on what little time we had left.

There are alternative scenarios but that’s a nice warm and fuzzy Christian outlook so a good place to start your investigation. Don’t be too suprised if you eventually end up with a rather more unpleasant hypothesis.

@Steven Thank you for your post. Yesterday was the first time I was on this forum & I have to tell you I was a little intimidated, it was kind of like,to you all, I was a jerk asking where the fuel was. Like everybody knows that. Well I don’t know if you are a fan of Arnie Gundersen or not but I was relieved when I saw his latest video in which he says when he was asked where the fuel is, he said he couldn’t comment because there was not enough DATA. That was exactly what I believed, that we really didn’t know!! Apologies if I took you all the wrong way, but although I am not a scientist I was trying to think like one & I knew all the stories of where it was supposed to be but they all seemed conflicting. Let me tell you I had to sit down & write Arnie a Thank-you note. Talk to you all later.

It has been my contention that the piping failed before the tsunami. They lost the power but more importantly they lost the piping systems. I don’t believe they ever updated their piping with the increasing severity of the storms and earthquakes. There is a vast difference between a 6.5 and 9.0 earthquake. The loading on the supports may double or triple.

New news:
“Disaster-hit Japan faces leadership change
The revolving door to the Japan prime minister’s residence is likely to spin again before the end of this month as Naoto Kan bows out to make way for the country’s sixth new leader in five years. The centre-left premier is widely expected to quit within about a week, almost half a year since the devastating March 11 quake and tsunami sorely tested his leadership and turned him into Japan’s top anti-nuclear crusader. The frontrunner to take his post is his finance minister, Yoshihiko Noda, a less divisive figure who has even floated the idea of a grand coalition with the conservative opposition to tackle Japan’s problems. Trade Minister Banri Kaeda and former transport minister Sumio Mabuchi have also thrown their hats into the ring, while others, including former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, are weighing their options.” (AFP)

I was on the news 24/7 4 days in a row after the tsunami. Diatchi was reporting 4 reactors down, Daini said one down with radiation detected, Oganawa reported 3 cooling pools cracked and leaking. Later they reported water splashed out of the pools and that was all. Then, they lost under water grid feed. In addition downed portions of grid may have been to blame for a Xenon release from the west side of the island a few weeks later so yeah, while all eyes are on Diatchi, people best not forget about plant issues.

As for Daini, it is known to be run by the military. Conceivable they have been doing something up their sleeves especially if the military and “higher up in the organization” Yakuza are involved in Daini, it’s probably a well kept secret who the sales go to. The large release of radioactivity from the accident at Chernobyl has resulted in considerable concern about the safety of the five large military production reactors that produce weapons-grade plutonium for U.S. nuclear weapons. Mox fuel rods in Fukushima reactor 3 present multiple dangers, let alone possibly “other” Japanese nuclear power plants that could get “caught” doing all this crap that’s bad that may yet still be unknown to the rest of the world because the rest of us are not suppose to know. The Japan nuke plants are built and harnessed on some bedrock, The landfill rock just crumbles in one’s hand. Tsunami and more water turns landfill to mud. Buildings sink in mud, like Reactor 4. Bad enuff more earthquakes will come to area of fault lines with compromised nuke plants there. Look to Arnie Gundersen at fairwinds for Fukushima updates to view in video and transcript. “And finally, all reactors are continuing to emit radiation, the containments have failed. So it’s going down as water and it’s going up in steam, and there is no plan in site to prevent that from happening in the future.” A.G. Seems very unclear at the moment where this is going to stop. It sounds as though they have a serious problem – this is the sort of thing Nuclear Engineers have nightmares about. The problem is that you can shut down the chain reaction in the reactor; but if it has been running for any length of time, it has a huge inventory of radioactive waste material from the reaction, which keeps pumping out heat. Anything up to 10% of the heat in the reactor is from these ‘so called’ fission products. And you can’t shut it down. You HAVE to cool it. They are systems which are designed to fail-safe; as long as they all function the way they are supposed to function – the difficulty is here that we don’t have any significant information about the problem in the cooling water. There is a finite probability that it will not be contained. That is the alarming possibility. I am sure that they will be doing everything concievable to ensure that the core is not uncovered.”~Galvin D.J. Harper Suppose it is because there are no answers, that the truth of the dangers and more dangers ahead are kept from panicking the public around the globe. Of course the Japanese people there are frightened and so ought the rest of the world be.

If Fukushima Daiichi had better defences against the tsunami, we wouldn’t be talking about a 20km exclusion zone right now. But it’s important to note there’s another Fukushima nuclear plant, Fukushima Daini, which was also overwhelmed by the tsunami. It achieved cold shutdown four days after the earthquake and is not in danger of meltdown.

Great picture…makes you wonder how Fuku 2 (Daini) survived and was able to shutdown in 5 days while Fuku 1 (Daiichi) was so heavily damaged.

Luck of the fault line? Bad initial construction at Fuku 1 where they shaved away so much altitude? Hmmm…

Or Better aim by HAARP? >;->

Just kidding… maybe…

Here’s a great first week timeline with more info about Daini than I have seen before and one of the best satellite photos of the plant complex at Daiichi I have seen dated March 14th clearly showing Reactors 3 and 4 had not yet blown their tops.

If you get a 404 block when trying to see a file sometimes you can ctrl-x the link in the link window, then ctrl-v it back and hit enter and la voila — there it is. Worked for me on this one. It’s the hand entering of the link that does it.

I don’t believe that the reactors at Fuku Daini are in cold shutdown. I saw and posted a report months after Mar 11 that 3 of the reactors at Fuku Daini are reported at the same level of concern as the #4 reactor at Fuku Daiichi.

Could be they are struggling also to contain Fuku 2. Probably won’t find out unless Fuku 1 plant blows up and then Fuku 2 will fall next when workers flee there also. Worst case scenario of course unless the reverse happens and Daini decides to blow sky high first. Lots of scenarios in an island that averages 1,500 earthquakes a year.

Shouldn’t be any problem to achieve “cold shut-down” because they define cold shut-down as the point when the bottom of the pressure vessel is below 100 degrees. No problem, because the fuel long ago melted through the damn pressuer vessel. IT’S EMPTY!

Reactor 1 radiation level swings back up again to 375 Sieverts on August 22…will it break the previous alltime high tomorrow? Does this look like a reactor that is anywhere close to being contained? Direct exposure to that level kill 100% of the human workers within 2 days.

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